The invention herein pertains to a method of furniture construction and particularly to the construction of upholstered furniture as is mass produced commercially.
Labor and material costs have escalated in recent years causing increased economic pressure on virtually all manufacturing operations. Nowhere can this pressure be felt more strongly than in the furniture industries such as in the manufacture of upholstered furniture. Manufacturers are constantly seeking ways to automate production and to reduce costs. Unfortunately some manufacturers, not being able to meet today""s challenges have closed their doors.
The manufacture and assembly of upholstered furniture has always required the skill of competent workers since flexible fabrics and rigid frames must be joined in a seamless manner providing a functional yet aesthetically pleasing piece for the consumer. Talented upholsters that once permeated the furniture industry are for the most part gone, requiring manufacturing operations to automate, out source, and inspect the finished products at a greater degree than ever before. With the influx into the country of foreign manufactured furniture, retail stores have become increasingly price and quality conscious, once again placing pressure on domestic manufacturers to deliver flaw-free products, sometimes under stringent time schedules. Upholstered furniture such as chairs and sofas are conventionally formed from wooden frames or substructures which are built of various wooden components fastened together and precovered by manually forming planar foam cushions therearound. The planar foam cushions are then stapled and hand trimmed to provide the structure for an outer decorative fabric and other ornamental features in the completion phase. More recently, ends have been cut from single plywood sheets and polyfoam sheets have been sawed to form a groove or cavity into which the ends are slid. The ends have arms with straight top surfaces and the cavities are also linear to accommodate the arm top surfaces.
As would be understood, the construction of individual furniture frame parts, such as ends, backs, legs or the like require much time and effort and oftentimes such components are rejected as being out of specification. Additionally, the manual forming of cushion material around wooden substructures has also caused problems, due to lack of uniformity standards of individual workers and due to the speed required to meet production demands. Linear top arm surfaces are often undesirable for sophisticated furniture purchasers.
Thus, with the problems and disadvantages of current upholstered furniture manufacturing methods well documented, the present invention was conceived and one of its objectives is to provide furniture construction with the least possible number of different parts required in the substructure or frame, but which has interesting contours.
It is yet another objective of the present invention to provide a furniture construction method which utilizes unitary ends cut from single, conventional plywood sheets with arcuate arm top surfaces.
It is yet another objective of the present invention to provide molded polymeric foam components having arcuate cavities to complement the arm top surfaces which can be easily mounted thereto.
It is a further objective of the present invention to provide a method of manufacturing furniture whereby relatively unskilled persons can construct an upholstered furniture piece with an arcuate arm in a quick and efficient manner.
It is still another objective of the present invention to provide furniture construction which is uniform and inexpensive to manufacture.
Various other objectives and advantages of the present invention will become apparent to those skilled in the art as a more detailed description is set forth below.
The aforesaid and other objectives are realized by providing a furniture construction method of producing furniture in which unitary ends of chairs, sofas or the like are formed from for example, standard plywood sheets cut with an arcuate arm top surface. The furniture end which defines an arm along its top surface is then covered with a preformed polymeric cushion having a cavity which is shaped to complement the shape of the arm top surface and is secured thereto by staples or other standard fasteners. The end, which is uniformly cut does not vary in shape or thickness and is easily covered with the polymeric foam which has been molded to rigid tolerances. After the foam cushions are applied, opposing ends are joined with dowel pins into back and seat support members and the assembly is then completed as is usual in furniture manufacturing operations including the addition of legs, springs, covering with suitable fabrics and the addition of seat and back cushions and the like. The furniture construction method as described greatly increases the ability of a relatively unskilled laborer to produce upholstered furniture having arcuate arms of a top quality in an efficient and economical manner.